Joe Adams Train

Joe Adams helped organize this train to promote Burley, Idaho’s Snake River Heritage Days.
Like Dell Magnums’ train this modern day wagon train also decided they’d begin at Montpelier, Idaho. But instead of hauling their wagons on trailers to the starting point, this group chose to drive their wagons both ways. They took over a month to travel from Burley and then back via the Hudspeth Cutoff out of Soda Springs.

Wagon train participants Joe and Frank Adams as well as Glen and Myra Beck and Lloyd Warr
have enjoyed driving wagons and teams for years. And the unique thing about this group is they travel completely self-supported, with no motorized support vehicles. They have dozens of these types of excursions under their belts. They enjoy both the historic nature of these trips and working with their teams.

"I look at a map and we’ve got to go east or west or north or south and if we can go where the old trails went that’s where I like to go We’ve done enough of these things that we plan 15-20 miles a day, any more than that and you don’t enjoy it. And when you climb up in that seat and tell the mule to go your dependency is on that mule it isn’t on a vehicle…and that’s what I enjoy about it."-- Joe Adams, Modern Day Wagon Train Organizer

"The reason we take these trails is because there is no pavement. We try to stay off that pavement as much as possible. … No it’s not easy at all but it makes you work. You can get on the pavement and drive down the road but you just as well do it in your car. As long as you can get out here and get on one of these trails where you have to drive and have to work and watch your animals and take care of things then it’s interesting."-- Frank Adams, Modern Day Wagon Train Participant

"It makes you think about the pioneers a little bit and what they went through. Of course we get a little taste of some of the experiences they had, not all of them. You think, this is the hill they climbed and this is where they went, it makes you want to learn more about it, as you are right on the trail it seems like it means more to you."-- Glen Beck, Modern Day Wagon Train Participant

"It really lets you know what your forebears went through that and the hardships that they went through. I especially like that the people went out and put the markers out there and have researched it. When you know that those wagons went that deep through there It gives you a good feeling because you know your forebears had done this and it is quite exciting to know that you can do it too still in the modern days 150 years later."-- Myra Beck, Modern Day Wagon Train Participant